Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalFred Grimm: Two more added to Florida prisons’ sadistic legacy
Fred Grimm: Two more added to Florida prisons’ sadistic legacy
10/09/2014 9:38 AM
| Updated: 10/09/2014 10:16 AM
What a ghastly continuum we’ve countenanced in our state penal institutions.
Just this week came news of two more highly suspicious killings in Florida lock-ups – 89 years apart. Two more unsettling deaths to be added to a long and sadistic legacy: a 15-year-old inmate at the Dozier School for Boys whose skull was bashed back in 1925 and a 36-year-old mother, who died with signs of “blunt force trauma” in her cell Oct. 1 at Lowell Correctional Institution.
For more than a century, it has been as if beatings, torture, rape, terror, killings, cover-ups were official state policy, ignored by law enforcement and shrugged off by politicians. For the last few months, the Herald and the Tampa Bay Times have been writing about two disparate outrages along these lines.
But maybe not. Maybe these recurring injustices are all part of the same, long festering scandal.
My colleague Julie Brown has written about the brutal deaths of several prisoners in the state system over the last few years, including that of Darren Rainey, a 50-year-old mentally ill inmate who died after he was locked in a scalding shower at Dade Correctional Institution in 2012 and Randall Jordan-Aparo, 27, who died after he was doused in aerosol chemicals at Franklin Correctional Institution in 2010.
More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fred-grimm/article2632733.html#storylink=cpy
Mexico’s Drug War is Killing Children
October 09, 2014
There's Little Mystery to This Mass Grave
Mexico’s Drug War is Killing Children
by LAURA CARLSEN
Many countries prohibit deploying their military for domestic law enforcement: it’s a recipe for violent authoritarian abuse.
But the Obama administration’s prohibitionist drug war is funding and encouraging abuse and brutal, corrupt, mass-grave-level murders throughout Mexico and Central America – enough that even drug-war apologists admit that the appalling increase in human-rights abuses are a result of sending the military and police into communities in the name of anti-trafficking.
In just nine years, the drug war waged by the US and Mexico has created a climate of violence that has claimed more than 100,000 lives throughout the country, many young people – including two horrific massacres and a mass disappearance in the last six months connected to law enforcement nominally tasked with battling the spread of drugs.
An ambush on 26 September, begun by uniformed local police and finished off by an armed commando, left six young people dead and 43 students missing, nearly half of whom were last seen in police custody. Others are battling for their lives in local hospitals (where the possibility of a new attack is considered so high that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordered precautionary measures for the wounded and the missing). This week, 28 semi-burned bodies were discovered in a mass grave, which authorities say could be the bodies of th e missing students. Politicians allied with cartels are blamed for the atrocity.
The mayor of Iguala, Guerrero, where the attacks took place, has gone into hiding, and the city’s head of security is charged with ordering the ambush. A state judge has charged 22 policemen with the crime and accused them of being hit men for the “Guerreros Unidos” gang.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/09/mexicos-drug-war-is-killing-children/
Paraguay’s Supreme Court issues ‘historic’ land ruling
Paraguay’s Supreme Court issues ‘historic’ land ruling
Cattle-ranchers’ legal action versus expropriation of 1,000s of hectares in favour of the indigenous Enxet people is rejected
Posted by
David Hill
Tuesday 7 October 2014 08.13 EDT
theguardian.com
Imagine being forced to leave your home to make way for cattle-ranching and live alongside a highway for years and years, dreaming, say, of one day returning to cultivate your grandparents’ garden plot, or remembering all the animals you raised there, or having to sneak back in to bury your dead. That’s been the experience for the indigenous Enxet people, from a community called Sawhoyamaxa in Paraguay’s Chaco forest, since the 1990s.
Last Thursday, though, the Enxet received some sensational news. The Supreme Court of Justice unanimously rejected ranchers’ claims that a landmark government decision made earlier this year to expropriate 14,404 hectares and give them back to Sawhoyamaxa was “unconstitutional.”
“We’re very happy to be able to recover our territories,” Sawhoyamaxa’s vice-leader Leonardo González told the Guardian. “We’ve been victims of the government and ranchers.”
“Justice has been done,” said Basilio Garcia, another community member, in a statement released by Paraguayan NGO Tierraviva, which supports the Enxet and calls the ruling “historic.” “We want to live better after so many years of suffering.”
“This demonstrates that Paraguayan justice is starting to compensate Paraguay’s historic debt to indigenous peoples, whose rights have always been violated,” said Eriberto Ayala, another Enxet man, in the same statement.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2014/oct/07/paraguay-supreme-court-historic-land-ruling
US official downplays Cuba's invitation to summit
Source: Associated Press
US official downplays Cuba's invitation to summit
By KATHIA MARTINEZ, Associated Press | October 8, 2014 | Updated: October 8, 2014 8:13pm
PANAMA CITY (AP) — A senior State Department official said Wednesday that the U.S. is prepared to welcome Cuba for the first time to a region-wide summit but wants heads of state to focus attention on the communist government's human rights record.
At the urging of Latin American leaders, host country Panama plans to invite Cuban President Raul Castro to the Summit of the Americas in April. Cuba was excluded from six previous summits because Washington said it didn't meet the region's standards for democracy and U.S. lawmakers, led by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, are urging Panama to reconsider its invitation this time around.
The deputy assistant secretary of state for Latin America, John Feeley, played down the significance of Cuba's likely participation. Speaking to journalists in Spanish during a stop in Panama on Wednesday, Feeley said that "it's not so important the guests at the table but the meal that's served."
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa boycotted the last summit in Cartagena, Colombia, over Cuba's exclusion and several of his leftist allies have threatened to sit out the next gathering of 34 regional heads of state if Cuba isn't invited to attend.
The Washington-based Organization of American States, which organizes the summits, suspended Cuba shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/US-official-downplays-Cuba-s-invitation-to-summit-5810429.php
Will Hollywood Give Him Last Word Against the CIA’s Media Apologists? The Resurrection of Gary Webb
October 07, 2014
Will Hollywood Give Him Last Word Against the CIA’s Media Apologists?
The Resurrection of Gary Webb
by JEFF COHEN
It’s been almost a decade since once-luminous investigative journalist Gary Webb extinguished his own life.
It’s been 18 years since Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News exploded across a new medium – the Internet – and definitively linked crack cocaine in Los Angeles and elsewhere to drug traffickers allied with the CIA’s rightwing Contra army in Nicaragua. Webb’s revelations sparked anger across the country, especially in black communities.
But the 1996 series (which was accompanied by unprecedented online documentation) also sparked one of the most ferocious media assaults ever on an individual reporter – a less-than-honest backlash against Webb by elite newspapers that had long ignored or suppressed evidence of CIA/Contra/cocaine connections.
The assault by the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times drove Webb out of the newspaper business, and ultimately to his death.
Beginning this Friday, the ghost of Gary Webb will haunt his tormenters from movie screens across the country, with the opening of the dramatic film “Kill the Messenger” – based partly on Webb’s 1998 “Dark Alliance” book.
The movie dramatizes Webb’s investigation of Contra-allied Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon (whose drug activities were apparently protected for reasons of U.S. “national security”) and their connection to L.A.’s biggest crack dealer, “Freeway” Ricky Ross.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/07/the-resurrection-of-gary-webb/
Terrorism and Assassinations in Venezuela
October 08, 2014
Silence From the Media as the Paramilitaries Go Rogue
Terrorism and Assassinations in Venezuela
by MARIA PAEZ VICTOR
Last Friday, the centre of Caracas was filled with thousands of mourning citizens as they accompanied two flag draped coffins loaded with flowers they had cast upon it in homage.
If a Member of Parliament representing the Venezuelan opposition had been brutally tortured and stabbed to death in his own home, the Western press –including Canada’s- would have splashed the news in headlines around the world.
Yet this has just happened to a Member of Parliament from the governing party of Venezuela, but the international press is mostly silent. International politicians have not wrung their hands with indignation or regret, as they have about the lawful incarceration of opposition leader Leopoldo López who publicly and repeatedly incited mobs to violence and caused has at least 47 deaths.
On Wednesday, October 1, 2014, Robert Serra, 27 years old, a lawyer and legislator from the governing party PSUV, the youngest Member of Parliament of Venezuela, and his partner Maria Herrera, were assassinated in their own home in a central area of Caracas. It was an outrageous and deliberate act of terror. Robert Serra and María Herrera were tortured, stabbed and then bled to death. He specialized in criminology, and was engaged in the task of helping to curb crime in the country. María Herrera assisted him in this vital work. Robert Serra came from a poor family; his mother worked as a street hawker to help him go to law school. He was famous for his insightful interventions in parliament and was much beloved, some referred to him as “ a future Chávez”.
Their deaths were carried out systematically. Ernesto Samper, ex-president of Colombia and current president of UNASUR, said: “This crime is evidence of the infiltration of Colombian paramilitary in Venezuela.”
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/08/terrorism-and-assassinations-in-venezuela/
New Orleans public paid $75,000 for judges' trips to beach resorts, mountain lodges, more
Source: Times-Picayune
New Orleans public paid $75,000 for judges' trips to beach resorts, mountain lodges, more
By NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on October 08, 2014 at 11:07 AM, updated October 08, 2014 at 3:52 PM
From the white sandy beaches of Florida to a mountain top resort in Montana and even a trip abroad to Panama, most New Orleans criminal district judges spent thousands in public dollars a year jetting off to conferences and events, even as they cut the court's operating budget and faced a large backlog of cases, records reviewed by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and WVUE Fox 8 News show.
The expenses totaled more than $75,000 for legal education conferences and other out-of-town trips in an 18-month period that ended in June. In that time, the court cut spending for jury services, legal transcripts, building maintenance and other key areas. The trips also took judges away from the bench, some for periods totaling weeks, as the court grappled with hundreds of backlogged cases.
Some of the most travel-happy jurists also were among those ranked least efficient in job performance by the non-profit watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission.
Judge Arthur Hunter was the courthouse's undisputed travel champ in the 18 months analyzed, billing the court $15,347 for 10 trips, including treks to conferences in Denver, San Antonio, and twice to a resort in Destin, Fla. Hunter ranked 9th out of 12 judges in the crime commission's most recent performance evaluation, released in June.
Read more: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/10/criminal_district_court_judici.html
Inca Ceremonial Site Uncovered in Central Peru
Inca Ceremonial Site Uncovered in Central Peru
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
LIMA, PERU—Peru’s Ministry of Culture announced that human remains have been unearthed in Hatun Xauxa, an Inca administrative and ceremonial center in the central Andean region of Junin. The burial site may be an offering related to the founding of the city. Walls bearing traces of red paint and dating to the first period of the city’s construction were also unearthed at the northern end of the ushnu, or sacred throne where liquids were poured out in offerings by the Incas. “These findings allow us to gauge the religious importance and the complex nature of activities in the ushnu of Hatun Xauxa, reflected also in the constant change in its architecture,” the ministry told The Global Post. Archaeologists will compare the well of offerings and burials at Hatun Xauxa with similar findings at the Huanuco Pampa site, an admistrative center related to the Qhapaq Ñan Inca road system. To read about an Incan ceremonial site in Ecuador, see ARCHAEOLOGY'S "The Water Temple of Inca-Caranqui."
http://www.archaeology.org/news/2581-141008-peru-inca-hatun-xauxa
(Link follows)
[center] ~ ~ ~ [/center]
The Water Temple of Inca-Caranqui
Was hydraulic engineering the key to winning the hearts and minds of a conquered people?
By JULIAN SMITH
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Tamara Bray of Wayne State University walks through a municipal lot in a suburb of the colonial city of Ibarra, in the Andean highlands of northern Ecuador. At 7,550 feet on the northern slope of Imbabura Volcano, the equatorial sun has an intensity that burns through the occasional cool breeze. Chickens peck in the dirt and we can hear children playing at a school nearby. As we walk through the lot, which is now an archaeological site called Inca-Caranqui, Bray explains that the local people knew this was an ancient settlement long before the first archaeological surveys in the late 1990s. Just across the street stand two walls—one 130 feet long and the other 165—that were built by the Inca. One wall has traces of three trapezoidal doorways with remnants of plaster and pigments.
Ecuadorian archaeologist José Echeverría leads us through the site, down a winding path that follows the low outlines of partially excavated walls. He explains that, in 2006, he was helping clear debris left over from a brickmaking operation when he uncovered some Inca masonry at the east end of the site, which turned out to be part of a large ceremonial pool about 33 by 55 feet in size. It was dug to a depth of four to five feet below the modern ground level and was surrounded by walls about three feet high. The walls and floor were made of finely cut and fitted stone.
Two types of canals were used to bring water from the surrounding area into the site of Inca-Caranqui.
Bray and Echeverría believe the pool may date to a period in the early 1500s, shortly after the Inca ruler Huayna Capac had concluded a 10-year war of conquest against the local people, the Caranqui. Legend has it that Huayna Capac had every adult male Caranqui executed. Their bodies were thrown into a lake known today as Yahuarcocha, or the “Lake of Blood,” on Ibarra’s northeast edge. Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de León estimated the conflict left 20,000 to 50,000 Caranqui dead.
Bray and Echeverría think that in the aftermath of that bloodshed, the Inca built the pool as part of a construction project that was meant to demonstrate their power to their new Caranqui subjects. The ceremonial pool would have represented a considerable investment of wealth and labor by the Inca. It also would have showed their skill as engineers by bringing water from as far as five and a half miles away and demonstrated their mastery over a resource with powerful religious symbolism.
More:
http://www.archaeology.org/issues/61-1301/features/324-ibarra-andes-huayna-capac-atahualpa
Former Governor pleads guilty to working with paramilitaries
Former Governor pleads guilty to working with paramilitaries
Oct 8, 2014 posted by Nicolas Bedoya
The former governor of the coastal state of Cordoba has pleaded guilty to facilitating land theft, displacement and working with paramilitaries in hopes of acquiring benefits during sentencing.
The former governor of Cordoba, Benito Osorio, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, money laundering, deportation, expulsion, forced displacement, destruction of property, and being a frontman. Osorio was appointed by former president Alvaro Uribe but kicked out of office 17 days later for his links with paramilitaries.
MORE: Prosecutor general orders arrest of former governor over forced displacement claims
Osorio confessed to having participated in the displacement of 100 families during 1997 to 2007 as President of Cordoba’s rancher’s association.
As President of Cordoba’s rancher’s association, Osorio presided over the displacement strategies and the rural takeover plans of the paramilitaries. Osorio knew of the paramilitary’s acquisition of 1,500 acres in Cordoba to bury bodies there. Osorio even knew where the AUC paramilitary leader, Carlos Castaño set up his headquarters, according to El Tiempo newspaper. As governor, Osorio took over 16 properties with the help of paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso, according to Caracol Radio.
Osorio also ratted out the President of Fedegan, Jose Feliz Lafaurie, according to El Tiempo newspaper. Fedegan is perhaps Colombia’s most powerful and influential agricultural guild, representing the nation’s cattle ranchers and land owners.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/para-politician-accuses-president-colombias-cattle-association-working-paramilitaries/
Government knew FARC leader would not attend 1999 peace talks ceremony: Official
Government knew FARC leader would not attend 1999 peace talks ceremony: Official
Oct 8, 2014 posted by Craig Corbett
The Colombian government knew beforehand that FARC leader “Manuel Marulanda” would not appear at the opening ceremony of failed peace talks that began in 1999, but has kept this quiet deliberately, the country’s former peace commissioner said Wednesday.
One of the most poignant moments was seen at the opening ceremony of the peace talks on January 7 1999, when former president Andres Pastrana addressed the crowd with an empty seat at his side, which should have been filled by the FARC leader Manuel Marulanda.
According to former Peace Commissioner Victor Ricaro, he and the former president were made aware by FARC leader that he would not be attending the peace talks more than a week in advance, due to planned assassination of Ricardo and Marulanda by paramilitary forces.
Until now, common belief has been that the FARC leader had snubbed the talks with no prior notice to the former president.
“He (Marulanda) said that that intention was to kill me and if it was not possible to kill Marulanda on the day of the ceremony. Either death would have seen the end of the peace talks. … with that information Marulanda called me and told me that he would not attend and that he would send representatives to negotiate, as the risk of the murders would be too damaging to the process,” said the then-Peace Commissioner.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/government-knew-farc-leader-attend-1999-peace-talks-ceremony-official/
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